1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a heat treatment method, a heat-treating furnace, and a heat treatment system.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, various proposals have been made about a method of subjecting a work to a heat treatment and a heat treatment device. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 62-186775 (JP62-186775 A), there is proposed a hot water heating device that introduces hot water from a hot water tank into a treatment tank so as to subject an object to a homogeneous heat treatment, for the purpose of cooking/sterilizing food and the like. Besides, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 08-41554 (JP08-41554 A), there is disclosed a treatment method for a waste battery. In this treatment method, the waste battery is introduced into a sealed heat-treating furnace. Then, the heat-treating furnace is sucked and exhausted while being heated. Thus, the waste battery is rendered in a non-oxidative state. After that, a non-oxidative gas is supplied into the heat-treating furnace through pressurization to rapidly and homogeneously heat the waste battery to a predetermined temperature. In Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-143486 (JP2004-143486 A), there is described a method of rapidly heating and rapidly cooling a non-ferrous metal alloy through the use of liquid metal Na. Besides, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-201479 (JP2005-201479 A), there is described a method in which a slug containing chrome oxides is immersed in warm water to remove hexavalent chromium.
Besides, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-273996 (JP2009-273996 A), there is disclosed a method of forming a pressurized reduced atmosphere with a view to decomposing PCB and various kinds of dioxin. In this method, a sealed container retaining pollutants and moisture therein is heated, so that the interior of the container is filled with superheated steam to form a pressurized reduced atmosphere. Besides, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-111511 (JP2011-111511 A), there is disclosed a regeneration treatment system that replaces air in a heat-treating furnace with superheated steam, and throws a raw material containing carbon compounds and a catalyst as well as a superheated steam into the heat-treating furnace to subject the carbon compounds to a regeneration treatment.
Nowadays, there have been demands for the development of heat treatment technologies for reducing a environmental burden. As a method of reducing the environmental burden, it is important to seek to achieve the enhancement of treatment efficiency.